Painting Pottery

Today our activity was for Lily and I to go paint pottery together.  They aren't always such a big activity and they usually involve all 4 of us, but every day is different.  Lily was very excited to go paint pottery and she loved it even more than I thought she would!!!  She would have painted every single piece of pottery in the place if I had let her. 

Christmas Sing-along

Lily is the girl with the giant white bow right on top of her head in the middle of the sea of kids.  I did not put her bow there, but that is where it ended up.  Here is Lily and her friend, Kara, trying to re-tie her bow during Hanukkah is Here.  I have a few funny videos of the singalong that I need to cut down to put on the blog.  The part that made us laugh the most was first, of course, Lily yelling for her coat and second, Lily clearly being a trouble maker!  I recognize this shouldn't make us laugh, but it wasn't real trouble...she was trying to get the kids around her to dance instead of doing the hand motions and then, once her bow was untied, she was putting the ribbons on the other kids heads.  Silly girl!!

Christmas Sing-along

Lily had her school Christmas sing-along on Tuesday.  She actually sang the words to lots of the songs!!!!  She didn't do a single hand motion and at one point was yelling to me from the front that she wanted her red Christmas coat.  But she loved it and so it was all fine with me.  Again, the line to meet Santa was 1 mile long and again, Lily opted out.  Fine by me!!! 

Christmas Get-together

 We got together recently with Bryan's Mom and Step-Dad and siblings and their spouses and kids to celebrate Christmas.  We had lots of fun seeing everyone.  Lily is definitely at the age where she LOVES her grandparents and was so very happy to see her Granddaddy especially!! 







Making gingerbread houses. 

Loving our new Deck still!!

My parents bought us a little Christmas tree for our deck and cranberries and popcorn to string for it.  Lily added some pretzels as well.  We were hoping birdies would come and eat the food from the tree but none ever did.  This was a great project, but not one that Lily would really help me with because of the large needle I hate to use.  I have now heard that some people do fruit loop garland and I think that's what we'll do next year so that Lily can help and though it is less classic, I do think it'll be equally as cute.

 

Our Advent Calendar

Years ago, my smart sister started doing daily activities as her advent calendar.  I loved that idea.  I liked making the time leading up to Christmas have a focus on family and spending time together when it's so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the season.  So, I was searching for my own way of doing this.  Then I saw this...

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/cone-iferous-advent-940425/

and thought it looked super adorable!!  Of course, we put our own twist on it, but I think it turned out pretty well.   I wrote activities on little pieces of paper and each day we do one.  It's been a lot of fun.  Lily has loved it!! 

We keep it next to the girl's girly tree.